Since Excel's primary function is to handle numerical data, the General number format displays numbers exactly as they are typed without any formatting.

How to Format Text in an Excel Spreadsheet. Excel's text formatting capabilities can make the results of your financial, statistical or scientific spreadsheet calculations more esthetically ...

Microsoft Excel depends on data that’s stored correctly. If you receive text values that should be real numbers, use one of these methods to get you back to the real work.

Why is my number stored as text in Excel? Excel doesn’t convert numbers written in text into digits if you import data from another source because of the default setting.

If the Excel cell format is not changing to a number because the Number formatting is not working, take these steps to fix the issue.

Learn Excel 365 number formatting to create clear, professional spreadsheets. Learn essential tips and advanced techniques for data clarity ...

Center and Left-Aligning Numbers When you enter text into a cell in Microsoft Excel, it aligns to the left, and when you enter a numerical value, it aligns to the right.

When you type a seven-or-ten-digit phone number into an Excel cell that uses the phone number format, Excel will automatically change the way the number looks so that it appears as a phone number.

Numbers (and Excel) reads this as straight text. After importing, you can select the column and explicitly set it to text via the Format Inspector > Cell > Data Format, where you choose Text.

However, when I go to reformat them, Excel -insists- on converting the number to scientific notation--and since I'm editing the string into a non-number format (multiple spaces, parenthesis, etc ...